1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
A social networking service (SNS) is known as a service that constructs a social network on the Internet. SNSs, which adopt person-to-person communication as a main objective, provide a place of information exchange to promote communication between friends or acquaintances and to construct new human relations through connection to others having no direct relations.
SNSs are generally provided on Web sites of the Internet using information server systems of various scales by service providers such as various operators, organizations, and individuals. In order to provide appropriate services, service providers maintain and manage systems in accordance with operation conditions of services that constantly change such as the number of registered users, relations formed between registered users, and the amount of information transmitted and received between registered users. Systems are maintained and managed through updates and reconstruction after changes of service operation conditions being grasped and analyzed, or a new service may be newly constructed after changes of operation conditions of other services being grasped and analyzed. Thus, it is important for service providers or system developers to accurately grasp and efficiently analyze SNS operation conditions that constantly change.
Here, since an SNS is a service realized by registered users and relations between registered users, operation conditions thereof can be represented as a mesh-type network structure in which a registered user is represented as a node and a relation between registered users as an edge. Thus, operation conditions of an SNS can suitably be grasped through representations (visualization) in a network structure.
On the other hand, tools to represent (visualize) a network structure are described, for example, in Non-Patent Documents 1 to 4 shown below as related art. Patent Document 1 shown below describes a technology to determine human relations among a plurality of users from public information to create human relation data. In addition, for example, a network analysis technique to conduct a statistical analysis of chronological changes of parameters representing a network structure is known.
[Non-Patent Document 1] “Program for Large Network Analysis”, Networks/Pajek [searched on Apr. 10, 2008], [online], Internet <URL: http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/>
[Non-Patent Document 2] “Cytoscape”, cytoscape [searched on Apr. 10, 2008], [online], Internet <URL:http://www.cytoscape.org/>
[Non-Patent Document 3] “Large Graph Layout”, Alex Adai [searched on Apr. 10, 2008], [online], Internet <URL:http://apropos.icmb.utexas.edu/lgl/>
[Non-Patent Document 4] “Graph Viz” [searched on Apr. 10, 2008], [online], Internet <URL:http://www.graphviz.org/About.php>
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-348179